PHEASANTS: IN WAR 123 
and see a hundred hens—if they are wild ones, you 
may reckon on a good many more unseen. But if 
you see a hundred hand-reared birds, probably you see 
all that there are to be seen. This is fortunate, par- 
ticularly from the keeper's point of view. For when 
he is expected to produce so many pheasants for 
the following shooting season, by hand-rearing he 
can manage it from a much smaller stock than if 
dependent entirely on the efforts and luck of birds 
allowed to conduct their own affairs. And wild 
birds are easier to keep at home, though it is 
uncertain in what part of it you will find them. 
Provided their home is reasonably attractive com- 
pared to the state of things beyond bounds, wild- 
bred pheasants relieve the keeper from that worrying 
tendency of hand-reared birds to stray, and to stay 
where they stray. Wild birds are not nearly so 
easy to manage, and therefore to show, as so-called 
tame ones; and so the keeper naturally prefers the 
latter, since, as is so much the case in these days, 
the demand is for a concentrated show. I should 
say that a hundred tame birds are likely to make 
a better one-day show than half as many again of 
wild ones. 
During a day's shooting the leakage of wild birds 
is so much greater than that of tame ones, in all the 
many ways in which pheasants can give one the 
slip. Assuming that you have cut off the escape of 
wild birds in every direction, they are by no means 
